Fury of a Hundred Eyes
by Sword of the Shadow
Summary: He hated them, hated them for hating him, for ignoring him, for whispering cruel things about him when they thought he couldn't hear. But most of all, he hated them for what the had, for what he didn't: magic. A sympathetic look at Hogwart's most hated.


**This is odd. But I was watching the Chamber of Secrets the other day, trying to fall asleep, and I saw the scene where Mrs. Norris was petrified. And it started me wondering, why does Filch love this cat so much? Why is he so cruel, so awful? It surely can't just be about him being a squib. And so this came to me. It's not much, but it's dear to my heart. I love Filch, in his own way. I think a lot of shit's happened to him, and that's the way he is. But no one ever stops to think about it much, and it makes me sad. Really sad. So I thought I'd give him a voice, for he doesn't have one of his own.**

* * *

He was always in the shadows, watching. They never noticed his pale, hard eyes glaring at them from the darkness of torch-lit corridors or dusty classrooms. He knew what they said. That he was unnatural, queer. He could appear out of nowhere, so suddenly that it felt like a scene from a Muggle horror movie. It was scary, they said, it must be _magic_.

How he wished they were right. How he hated that they were wrong, that he was _wrong_. Mother had explained it to him, kindly at first. Father had refused to say anything, just glaring at him as if he were dirtier than their House Elves' pillow cases. He couldn't do the the things that mummy and daddy did, she said, but that didn't mean they loved him any less.

But it did, and he knew it then, for despite the sweet tone, her eyes had none of the sweetness, none of the love that she professed.

He set out to prove himself, filching their wands when they weren't paying enough attention- and they rarely paid attention to him, anymore-and waving them about furiously, whispering the secret words that could never mean anything to him. _Lumos_ produced not even the faintest spark, and the only time he ever managed to float a feather with _wingardium leviosa_ was when he had huffed in frustration and his breath had sent it flying.

He kept torturing himself with his attempts at magic, year after year. And he turned eleven, and no Hogwarts letter came, no list of school supplies or warnings against first years having their own broomsticks. But the next year, the letter for Aradia came, and his parents had been just so proud. She came back from Diagon Alley with new robes and an owl, but most importantly, a _wand_. And she had waved it about so proudly, and gone of to Hogwarts to learn _magic_. She never seemed the least bit awed by it, accepted all of the spells as her due. She came back home, turning teacups into rats and other such nonsense, and laughed as her parents- not his, not any longer- scolded her and complained about the increasing amount of galleons they had to pay to keep her from being expelled.

If he had that gift, he wouldn't have done any of that. He would have done spells that were worthwhile, spells that made a difference. He would have found a way to give magic to the squibs, all of them, and perhaps even the Muggles. Why was anyone denied the gift of magic? How he loved to feel it, the warmth that Aradia had said flowed through her fingertips as her wand picked her- unicorn hair and beech, ten inches- how there was a warmth in the chest when she cast her first spell, the same _lumos_ that he had been struggling with for years.

She pitied him. Told him how sorry she was that he couldn't go to Hogwarts, couldn't even fly on a broomstick- and flying was oh so wonderful, and the castle was oh so brilliant, and she had _so_ many friends, and wasn't life a beautiful _fucking _rainbow?

But he only saw the rainbow in greys and blacks, and the occasional red that would cloud his vision as she told him of the students, of all those little brats who had what he so desperately wanted, needed, and treated it like it were nothing. What was magic? Even the Muggleborns that Aradia described, even they lost their respect, the reverence that they should have felt towards magic. It was just _there_ for them, they didn't have to worry about losing it, and soon the magic lost its glimmer.

How he hated them, then.

Her friends would come over, occasionally, and stay for a few days or weeks during the summer. They never talked to him, but ogled at him as if he were something in a menagerie. They would poke his sister, and perhaps point at him, and giggle.

He sat at the dinner table, his fists clenched in rage, ignoring any attempts to draw him into conversation. He couldn't contribute anything, anyway. It was all about magic, and he had none of his own.

On his seventeenth birthday, he had been kicked out of the house, disowned, and told to find his own name. So he had, seething with anger. It didn't matter to them that a whole year would pass before he would be of legal age in the Muggle world, that he had no secondary education, nor even a primary one, or that he had no place to go in the Magical world. After his status had been discovered, he hadn't left the house.

So he went, hitchhiking where he could and walking where he could not, to the one place that he had always wanted to go, but had been denied entrance. He didn't like to remember that time, those seemingly endless weeks of no food, of being threatened by burly Muggles with long knifes, of womens' pulling their children out of his path, hissing about his long hair and strange clothes.

And he had found Hogsmeade, and convinced someone- he couldn't even remember who- to take him up to the castle. He couldn't even _see_ the school; for all the pure blood running through his veins, he counted as nothing more than a pitiful Muggle in the magical world.

But they headmaster had looked at him over those small glasses of his, his blue eyes for the first time seeming to see, to understand.

And he had stayed.

He was the caretaker, and he was finally allowed to punish the little twats for having what he didn't and not reveling in it, not appreciating it. Not as much as he'd like, of course. Headmaster was strict on his rules, no whips or chains or any such things. He wanted the little pricks to suffer just as he had, to feel the pain that he was feeling now, as he watched them skip around the castle like fucking little fairies or something, jinxing each other and summoning forgotten homework.

But there was that rule, the rule that he enforced above all others.

_No magic in the corridors._

If students were out late, that meant nothing. But when they did magic, especially in front of him...

He always insured that they received the worst detentions, hopefully with himself. Oh, how he made them suffer. They had to do everything as he had to, without the magic. And, oh, how they would complain. It's not fair, why did they have to do it this way, it was beneath them! Was it fair that he didn't even have the chance, the bloody opportunity to clean shields with magic. He wanted to show them, show those little fucking buggering arseholes what it meant to live in a magical world, but to not have magic. Just like he had to.

But then he had met her, and none of that mattered anymore.

Ailuros.

Such a pretty name, for such a pretty girl.

She was seventeen, a seventh year, and he was nineteen. She was a Pure blood, like him, but her parents still wanted her. At first, he resented that. But she was kind to him, and smiled at him, and greeted by name as they passed in the corridors. And her eyes never lost their sparkle when she performed a spell. To her, magic was something to be revered, _worshiped _even. She still prayed to the old gods, the gods from before the Romans had come and built their baths and walls. Like him. They never did anything much, never gave him the magic he wanted, but still, he prayed.

They began to see each other. At first, it was just short conversations in the hall. Eventually, he asked if he might carry her books to class. Ailuros smiled, and that smile lit up his entire world. Her smile had a magic all its own, and she only smiled that way for him. It was the only magic he could do, and he cherished it dearly.

They spent more and more time together, snogging in abandoned classrooms. His position as caretaker was a boon, then, for who would stop them? He was usually the only one prowling around the corridors, the perfect Prefects having abandoned their duties for the arms of their lovers. And so he abandoned his, for once being just like every one else his age.

Ailuros tried to teach him magic. She couldn't see, like him, why it should be denied to anyone. And they worked at it, him holding her wand and saying those magic words until his lips were dry and his voice hoarse. And she would smile, that smile that was only for him, and somehow it wouldn't matter that he didn't have magic, because he did have _her._

And then _it_ happened. She'd handed him her wand, per usual. He started waving it around, smiling, like he only did around her. He was happy, and laughing, and it was not as if anything could actually happen. Ailuros claimed that everyone had a magical core, but the problem was reaching it. That was his problem. He didn't believe her, didn't dare to even _hope_ that that could be the case, not really, because he would be disappointed, surely. So he waved her wand around, grinning like an idiot, and mumbled some nonsense under his breath.

There was a flash of light, and a noise that sounded like everything thrown together all at once.

"You did it, Argus! You did magic!" She smiled at him, that only-for-him smile, and then her body began to twitch, and twist, and shrink. She didn't cry out, didn't allow her eyes to squeeze shut in pain. That smile stayed fixed to her face, and it was the last thing he saw of Ailuros.

In her place, sat a cat.

* * *

Mrs. Norris. That was what he named her. He couldn't bear to call her Ailuros, because Ailuros was a girl, a human, and Mrs. Norris was not. So he took her last name, and called her Mrs. Because he had fostered secret dreams of marrying her. 

If the students had complained about him before, it was nothing to how they complained after _it_.

Together, they would prowl the halls. It was so bittersweet, but mostly bitter. His love stayed by his side, but not as a human, not as the Ailuros he had loved. Nothing could change her back, he had been told. Only the caster could reverse the spell, whatever spell it had been, and he couldn't do that.

It was the one bit of magic that he had ever managed. The thing that should have made him happiest, that should have made him cry and shriek in joy with wild abandon, was the thing that tore his heart to pieces.

He never gave up on trying. He would do anything, anything, just to manage one more piece of magic, the one that would turn her back. He underwent rigorous medical tests, submitted to prodding and poking, but the results were always the same. He was a Squib. He couldn't do magic. He went to experts, and even went to Ollivander's. The old man was surprised when he was selected by a wand. He crooned to Mrs. Norris that night, ecstatically explaining to her that she was right. He did have a magical core, but it was buried somewhere deep, locked in a place to which he had no key.

He sent away for the Kwikspell correspondence course, but that was nothing more than a load of rubbish. It came in a fancy purple envelope, but it was a scam, asking for exorbitant sums for the simplest information. Desperate as he was, he gave up on that as a lost cause.

And so he stayed at Hogwarts, Mrs. Norris at his side. He cursed the students, for their magic, and now for the loves that they didn't lose. Not like he had. A squabble here and there, that was nothing. They were lucky, blessed.

What had he done to deserve this?

And in his room at night, the door locked with Muggle methods that no one at Hogwarts could break, he cried. The one person who had never hated him, who had been kind to him, who had seen past the scowl on his face and the prematurely etched age lines on his brow, was lost to him forever.

And it was his own damn fault.

But Mrs. Norris was there, his love, his precious, meowing softly, and smiling that cat smile that was only for him.


End file.
